Tuesday, August 23, 2011

What makes a good novel?

In the course of an interview, Norm
Goldman, the publisher and editor of Bookpleasures, asked me what made a good novel. My thoughts turned
immediately to the well-known Somerset Maugham quip, which is (approximately)
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what
they are’. In fact, it’s a hard question and answers may even vary depending on
the sort of novel you prefer to read. But the scope (and looseness) of the form
almost encourages diverse responses. I think mine are pretty basic.

First, you have to believe what’s
happening in the pages, even if it means stepping outside what’s normally
called ‘reality’. The hero may be a battle-scarred galaxy wanderer with green
blood and a prehensile nose, but if you’re interested in him and care what
happens to him, you’ll read on. In fact, I’m sure I’d find such a character far
more sympathetic and interesting than the pieces of cardboard that masquerade
as characters in the Dan Brown epics. (Sorry, Dan, if that upsets you. Go and
read your bank balance, that’ll cheer you up.) Sci-fi may hop from planet to
planet or past to future as if they’re neighbouring streets, fantasy may move
into fifth, sixth or other dimensions, vampires may even overcome mortality
itself but, in each case, if there’s a commitment to and a concern for the
creatures living the story, you’re held by them.

So the primary quality of a good
novel is its ability to make you care about its characters, worry for them,
dislike them for what they do to others, pity them. Above all, you need to
believe in their reality. It’s your empathy/sympathy that guarantees the
authenticity of their world. If you’re involved in it it must, by definition,
be real.

Another obvious quality must be
the page-turning one. You have to want to know what happens next. Sometimes,
the intensity of the emotions involved (yours as well as the characters’)
transcends the actual story but usually there’s a journey to make, problems to
be solved, setbacks to be overcome. I’d argue that these, too, depend on the
characters and their interactions, but as a plot develops, it renews those
chars, gives them opportunities to redefine themselves, makes them harder or
easier to like. They can’t grow in a void, they need to be tested, questioned.

Then you get to the other
qualities, the sub-texts,themes – all
those things which, for some students in tutorials, ‘spoil’ the novel. ‘Why do
there have to be meanings?’ they ask. ‘Why spoil the story by analysing it,
taking it apart?’ And it’s not easy to answer those questions. If they’re
enjoying reading something, that should be sufficient in itself. On the other
hand, a closer look at the text can make it even better as echoes are heard,
hidden motives are revealed, characters are exposed as being not just
individual psyches but representatives of greater truths. But even if they
resist the analytical urge, readers will still be affected by the great novels
in ways of which they may be unaware, but which come from subtler processes
than ‘good stories’ or identifying with the people in them.

It’s the things that make a good
novel great which are the hardest to pinpoint. They’re the result of some extra
elements that the better novelists achieve, a sort of layering which gives you
the satisfaction of the story but also suggest undercurrents, a significance
just beyond your perceptions. Even after you’ve finished reading, your mind
keeps returning to what’s happened or to an image because it’s stayed with you,
disturbed you or made you smile. These are things whose meaning goes beyond their
own immediate context. On the surface, novels like that are certainly about
people, but they’re also about indefinable forces.

And they’re fundamental to the
form. Even with novels which are too easily dismissed as ‘mere genre’ novels,
these forces are at work. If readers are lifted from their limited present into
a realm where unicorns graze and everything is possible, their experience of
life is enhanced. Whether this happens from reading Tolstoy or a hospital
romance is irrelevant. The point is that it happens.

The novel is a great form. It
gives you space in which to let things develop. You can create echoes between
themes that bring together things which on the face of it are separate. You
hear an animal scream in the woods as a man reflects on a love he’s just lost
and you fabricate connections between them. And when I say ‘you’ there, I mean
the reader. That’s the final beauty of the form and one I mention ad nauseam:
the writer provides the raw materials and the indications butleaves room for the reader to do some work,
create some patterns, draw his/her own conclusions. It’s a strange, but
powerful intimacy between the two.

2 comments:

Bill, great points. There are a lot of books I enjoy, but the one I consider truly "great" are the ones that leave me thinking--and feeling--long afterward. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, and A SEPARATE PEACE are a few that come to mind. All of them touched something in me and haunt me to this day. Oh, to write such a book.